Dr. Andrew Hamilton

Position: Doctor

Institution: University of Cape Town, Dept. of Physics.

Awards: Winner Elsevier Young Scientist Award P-Rated

Biography

Despite the fact that it takes a long complicated path to uncover it, I believe the laws of physics are inherently simple. It is this simplicity, hidden beneath layers of complexity, which fuels my passion for physics research.

During my undergraduate degree at York University, I was inspired by my Honours supervisor, Prof. Sampa Bhadra, to follow experimental particle physics as a means to satisfy my curiosity for the fundamental nature of matter. During my PhD at the University of Alberta under Prof. James Pinfold, I explored the nature of electromagnetic and colour-singlet interactions of high energy protons as a means to measure the properties of the Higgs.

Since 2006, I have been a member of the ATLAS experiment who's primary goal was the discovery of the Higgs Boson. As a post-doc with the University of Geneva, I had the great fortune to be at CERN during the crucial detector commissioning phase. In 2011, I joined the University of Cape Town as a Lecturer, where I now lead the ATLAS research group. Now that we have discovered the Higgs [PLB 716 (2012) 1-29] there are still lots of predictions of the Standard Model left to test – including many of the properties of the newly found Higgs Boson.